I once had a prospective client/business owner who was ready to hire me. He said before he hired me he had to ask his bookkeeper their opinion. The bookkeeper had not met me and did not know me and although I thought it was a strange way to operate, I said that was fine. When I followed up with the prospect, he said that the bookkeeper thought a CFO was not needed and based on that, the business owner said he was not going to hire me.

I was surprised by this. I felt bad for the business owner on how he would let the bookkeeper make such a decision. I told this prospective client that in my experience there were only two reasons why a bookkeeper would say no to CFO services without knowing or meeting the CFO:

1. The Bookkeeper is acting very inappropriately in the day to day responsibilities of their job (possibly stealing) or;

2. The Bookkeeper is afraid to have their numbers scrutinized in fear that inadequacies in the bookkeeping will be exposed.

The point is that bookkeepers and CFOs famously work well together. They complement each other. The Part Time CFO goes into the engagement happy when they know a bookkeeper is on staff preparing the numbers. This allows the CFO and bookkeeper to work together to make sure the numbers are right so the best business decisions can be made for the client. The Bookkeeper and CFO are a powerful combination in terms of helping the business generate accurate financial numbers. That is why it should be suspect when a bookkeeper rejects a CFO they haven’t met.